Yes, I am aware that I am a man commenting on images of women…?
These two images were striking simply because they were back to back in the same newspaper. What does each image say about…well, a whole bunch of things really.
I recently went to a seminar on ‘Masculinities and crime’. And the speakers talked about the way certain attitudes and behaviours are linked to gender, become in certain ways ‘masculinized.’ Michael Flood was one speaker and Kerry Carrington the other. Kerry spoke about the difference between monologic and dialogic aspects of masculinity, the former being somewhat closed, rigid, controlling and aggressive, the latter more open, fluid, discussive, democratic and friendly. As always I have provided the links here so check out for yourself what they more fully have to say. An important topic.
Ingrid Poulson has been in the news a little lately. In 2003 her then husband, murdered her father and her two young children.
I listened to an interview with her on Radio National (‘Life Matters’ 7th August 2008) and she sounded really lovely, really well, really positive. Pretty amazing. And she has written a book ‘Rise’ and I am only too pleased to say so. I have no idea if it[s any good but I intend to take a look. In the interview I was struck by a number of things. She said that when her children were killed she was ‘un-mumed’. And she asks: what are we without a role? She asks: if we lose our role do we lose our identity? Good questions I think.
She also said something along the lines that at one point she had been telling her story so many times to so many groups that: ‘I was…it was becoming a little bit too much of my story…I’ve really chosen to move on…’ This also seems a great comment about how to deal with tragedy.
Of her current partner she said that perhaps the radio interviewer could ask him to help her with children. So even after her experience of 2003 she wants more children. She says: ‘…it’s something I wouldn’t mind doing.’ Pretty impressive I thought.
And from the Sydney Morning Herald (August 9th 2008) I read that her idea of resilience is based on four ideas:
- Resolve (Giving yourself permission to survive)
- Identity (acknowledging your wins and embracing flexibility)
- Support (You cant do it alone)
- And everyday (eat well, get some exercise and don’t watch too much TV)
I think my top four would be:
- A sense of belonging
- Identity and a clear sense of self
- Good relationships
- A sense of being in charge of yourself
I wonder if we really differ so much? All the very, very best to Ingrid. An inspiration truly.
This is a bit of a development from the last thing I put up. The camp where most of us were young-ish…and some of us somewhat older. And good things happened:
And as our 5 day camp together came to a close I asked a question of a bunch of people of various ages ranging across 35 years. This is what I asked: What is the best thing in the world? And this is what they said:
Life
Music
Friends
Children
Life
Music
People
Life
Love
My daughters
So…how would you answer the question? What do you think is the best thing in the world?
So in June we went and did it again. The Beyond Empathy camp in Northern New South Wales. Many of the old crew, and some new crew. Around 50 or so of us, mostly yungins but some of us older ones to add something we hope. And we did a bunch of stuff. And the animoto video here gives you a pretty good idea of what that all was.
And if you can’t make that work for some reason or if you just prefer pics that don’t move about…here are some stills.
A very good experience of people working together, getting on, finding differences, finding the common ground…eating, talking, laughing, pushing boundaries a tad…all in all … a good thing.
I bet you thought you knew what was important? And you’d be right. Body hair! This newspaper article tells us so. Whether guy or doll, bloke or sheila, male or female, excess body hair is something you do not want.
And you can wax, or you can IPL (this is not canned fruit ha! ha! ha!); it is as you know, ‘intense pulsed light’. This starts at around $70 and a full body job is about $300. A bargain. Then there is threading which is of course rolling a cotton thread over what the article describes as ‘rebellious brows’ and a bunch of hairs is then ripped out. And we have of course the more familiar depilatory creams which seem at least to be painless. Sometimes there are just too many things to get excited about aren’t there.
And what’s just fabulous about this of course is that it used to be only women who were worried about such things. But with equal opportunity exploitation men can now line up for a new piece of superficiality to be concerned about. Oh lucky lucky.